Abundance Mindset

Abundance Mindset

A cornucopia of food is on the horizon! Family and friends come together around the Thanksgiving holiday for a celebration of being thankful. And, as the autumn holiday brings about food aplenty, it’s a good chance to step back and do some reflection on the abundance mindset.

Once you understand what it is, then you start to experience the many benefits available. Included among those benefits, you can see how gratitude can be a part of embracing abundance in your everyday life.

What Is an Abundance Mindset?

Why didn’t I get that raise? How much money does she have in her bank account? When will they finally pick me for that?

To understand abundance, we need to understand scarcity and the mindset built on fear. At its core, a scarcity mindset can be likened to pessimism; one sees the glass half-empty when thinking about what is owned, accomplished or received. Scarcity lays the power of the self outside oneself, so responsibility is someone else’s for the good and bad that comes.

And, as the podcast Hidden Brain’s Shankar Vedentam notes in the episode, “How The ‘Scarcity Mindset’ Can Make Problems Worse,” that, “Scarcity produces a kind of tunnel vision, and it explains why, when we’re in a hole, we often lose sight of long-term priorities and dig ourselves even deeper.”

Thankfully, there is a different mindset, and that’s the abundance mindset. To live with a mindset of abundance takes not just credit for your accomplishments, but responsibility for your life all told. And, by embracing your life–the good, the bad, and the ugly–you can fully know life. You can live wholly. You can live with abundance.

Abundance mindset affects how you perceive your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual worlds, and even your finances. Consider how much you think you should, could, would, and/or want to have in the bank account. I think the phrase, you have more than enough when you enjoy everything you’ve got, sums up abundance mindset quite nicely. It’s not settling for less. It’s not presuming you don’t deserve more. An abundance mindset is recognizing that more is not always better, but being in right relationship with everything you have.

When you stop thinking about what limits you, and you start thinking about what opportunities you can leverage from what you have, you have achieved the abundance mindset and all the benefits that come with it.

The Benefits of an Abundance Mindset

So, how does an abundance mindset benefit you? Thankfully, we have a treasure trove of research from Stanford University professor Carol Dweck and her team on what she called “growth mindset.” I won’t get into it too much now, but understand that when you believe you have a growth mindset, you grow in every way, you can learn from mistakes more rapidly, and therefore you learn better generally.

As Dr. Naveen Jain expresses in his TEDxBerkeley talk, “The most scarce resource on the planet: Mindset of abundance,” the abundance mindset provides a remarkable number of benefits in our personal lives, and for the future of our species and the planet.

In addition, when we think abundantly, victories are about bringing people together toward progress. Rising tides lift all boats. There are many ways to get things done, especially interdependently. As Dr. Stephen R. Covey of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective fame would identify the skills of abundant thinking, win-win-win and synergy, provide greater value than you started. And, most importantly, your inner world is more powerful and plentiful than your outer world, and when we grow there we tap into the unlimited potential and development opportunities.

Being Grateful and the Abundance Mindset

So, to turn inwardly to gain a greater abundance mindset, we can learn from the author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. In his The New York Times bestseller, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2009), he writes, “Whatever you think the world is withholding you, you are withholding from the world.”

Love and joy and gratitude are abundant emotions. All emotions are actually abundant in the right amounts (including anger, sadness, frustration and others). Observations of abundance itself is abundant. According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center’s summary of Dr. Robert Emmons’s research, your happiness can increase by 25 percent or more by regularly touching base with your gratitude.

So, to be grateful is an act of abundance, that someone is giving of themself to you in emotion, spirit or otherwise. You can be grateful for being alive. You can be grateful for planet Earth providing us a place to exist. The opportunities to be grateful are themselves abundant. If you can dwell on gratitude a little bit regularly throughout the year, you can find greater feelings of wholeness. You can give of yourself with your whole heart, mind and spirit.

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Where are you with your mindset? Are you embracing the abundance mindset in gratitude? Those two questions are a good first step in paving a pathway to greater abundance mindset.

Other ways that you can practice an abundance mindset with gratitude is to spend every few weeks finding all things in your everyday life for which you can be thankful. The following week, spend time to send mindful messages of gratitude to the people you want to thank. A card mailed to a friend, family member or colleague. Or, an email or phone call thanking someone for kind words or deeds. The act of reaching out and giving your gratitude sparks a chain reach of abundance of good out into the world.

Let me know in the comments ways that you practice an abundance mindset or gratitude around this Thanksgiving holiday, or throughout the year!

Hitting Snooze on Insomnia

Hitting Snooze on Insomnia

How to Get a Good Night’s Rest When Fighting Sleeplessness

We all hear about the dangers of lack of sleep. Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Verizon-owned HuffPost (formerly Huffington Post) wrote a 2017 The New York Times best-selling book about the topic of sleep entitled, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time.

In The Sleep Revolution, Huffington explains that there is a “sleep deprivation crisis” as she calls it happening in the United States and abroad. And, this crisis is affecting our health and wellness, our economy, and loved ones around us.

More precarious are those who suffer from insomnia, a sleep disorder characterized by the lack of ability or difficulty to fall or stay asleep. According to a United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2014 study, 35.2% of US adults get less than seven hours of sleep per day, which is unhealthy for most people.

In this week’s installment, I write about what insomnia is, what are some of the common causes of insomnia, and techniques to combat insomnia for a good night’s rest. 

Insomnia, an Overview

As stated, insomnia is a sleep disorder. Its main symptoms include:

  • Trouble falling and staying asleep;
  • Waking up frequently throughout the night and difficulty going back to sleep;
  • Rising too early in the morning; and,
  • Fatigue when you wake up in the morning.

Insomnia comes in four variations: primary, secondary, acute, and chronic. And, all of these forms of insomnia should be diagnosed by a medical professional. 

Primary insomnia is diagnosed when your sleep challenges are not related with any known medical problem or condition. Whereas, secondary insomnia is when it’s caused by some other condition, such as arthritis, asthma, cancer, depression, medication use, pain, or substance use/abuse.

Acute and chronic insomnia has to do with the length of the period that the insomnia happens. In acute insomnia, it is short-term (from one night to many weeks) and last for periods of time and then ceases for the person. And for chronic insomnia, unfortunately, it lasts for at least a few nights per week for longer than a few months. It’s the persistent and ongoing form of sleeplessness.

So, you can have primary-acute, secondary-acute, primary-chronic and secondary-chronic forms of insomnia, which are caused by many common factors.

Common Causes of Insomnia

When insomnia strikes, it’s important to understand the most common causes so that you can start to eliminate them from your life, if possible, and bring back restful sleep.

Acute insomnia causes consist mainly of:

  • a traumatic life event/stressor (such as demotion/termination at work, death in the family or close relationship, or end of a significant relationship);
  • Factors in the home that impacts sleep, such as cold/heat temperature, lighting or sound stressors that keeps one awake;
  • Distress from emotional or physical challenges;
  • Medications that trouble your sleep patterns; and
  • Significant changes to your normative circadian/metabolic schedule (caused by travel, changing work shifts, caring for a newborn infant, etc.).

Chronic insomnia consists mostly from:

  • Anxiety, depression and related mental health issues/symptoms;
  • Chronic stressors; and
  • Persistent discomfort or pain during evening hours when trying to sleep.

While it may seem plentiful, the ways you combat sleeplessness are also bountiful and varied. With experimentation, you can find the right techniques to hit snooze on insomnia so you can get a good night’s rest.

How To Get Your Sleep On!

To tackle insomnia for now, or for good, you need to attack the disorder from both biological and emotional directions. Here are some well-known techniques for getting to sleep.

Your body gets ready to sleep by releasing melatonin from the pineal gland into your bloodstream. This triggers your brain to know that, when the sun lowers and your metabolism drops, it is time to start to go to sleep. Insomniacs sometimes have problems with that biological process triggering. These circadian rhythm breakers can be mended by trying a combination of the following:

  • Go to bed when you feel tired. It made sound simple, but don’t stay up to watch your favorite Netflix/TV show. Shut down and head straight to bed as soon as you feel any sleepiness in the evening. This will teach your body that you won’t overstimulate and will go to bed when it’s ready.
  • Something that may help is turning off those screens (computers, TVs, smartphones) well before bedtime; at least two hours, so that your pineal gland can produce enough melatonin to trigger sleep on time and in the right amount.
  • Too much stimulation, like a heated or exciting phone conversation or email/SMS/other messaging, can flood the body with chemicals that outweigh melatonin production and stymy your sleep trigger.
  • Exercise sometime throughout the day. 30 minutes of regular, elevated activity (for example, fast walking around the neighborhood) moves blood around the body in a way that has been shown to help with sleep. There is debate over whether doing this too close before bedtime can compete with sleep, so complete this activity at least three hours before then for safe measure.
  • Also, drink herbal tea at least three hours (and make it more like six hours) before bedtime so that, again, you are not messing with your melatonin levels to announce it’s sleep time when your body is ready.

When a traumatic event happens, or even small stressors that pile up over time, this can have an emotional toll on our conscious and unconscious, which keeps us wound up when we should be winding down for sleep. To deal with those emotional insomnia issues, try testing these mental techniques:

  • Mindfulness is something that I talk about often with clients, and there’s a reason for that. It works! Set aside a five to ten minutes at the end of your day to take deep breaths into your stomach (expanding your diaphragm, not your chest). This can help remove toxins in your blood, and reduce the emotional impact of the day giving way to space for slumber.
  • Spend quality time with loved ones and personal friends for better sleep. This time is active, and connecting with others establishes a social buffer to many of life’s issues. In turn, this sets you up for better sleep quality.
  • Journal your worries away. Writing before bedtime can help you access your worries, within reason, to get some of the most troubling worries (even pain or discomfort you may be feeling) out of your head and onto paper, or digital. When you do, set aside judgment of yourself and the issues; capture just to get them anchored somewhere outside yourself so your mind doesn’t need to work on those issues in your conscious. That leaves your unconscious to work on them while you’re sleeping, and frequently you’ll find that you can drift off to dreamland more easily.
  • This bears repeating, but technology can not only cause biological problems with our sleep, it can tamper with our emotions when trying to combat insomnia. Try moving your smartphone out of the bedroom at night and see if the disconnect from the problems associated with the world tied to your digital devices helps you sleep better.

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While Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution isn’t a clinical thesis it’s an alarm bell that is helping popular culture understand the importance of how sleeplessness is affecting large populations at home and abroad. If we can all do our part to sleep better, even when insomnia strikes, we can increase happiness, productivity and our relationships.

Do you struggle with sleep? Have you struggled with insomnia in the past? What have you learned that overcame sleeplessness? Let me know in the comments!

Dangers in the Water - Four Directions Wellness

Dangers in the Water

In 1975, acclaimed director Steven Spielberg premiered the summer blockbuster film, Jaws. A summer resort town was terrorized by a man-eating great white shark in New England. The foreboding nature of that shark’s dorsal fin as it raises out of the water that alerts people that there are dangers in the water.

But today, in your drinking water in reality, lurks more dangers in the water. And, they’re usually invisible to the naked eye. So, I am going to cover the top three dangers in the water I have come across in my research and provide some tips for keeping your water—drinking, cooking and bathing—as clean as possible for you and your family. 

Phthalates and Lead in Drinking Water | Dangers in the Water

There are many harmful contaminants that can affect your drinking water today. From PFOA to mercury to nitrate to arsenic, there is one compound that leads in the media, and that’s phthalates.

Phthalates are, according to Wikipedia, are a group of chemical compounds used as “plasticizers,” meaning they are used to “increase [plastic’s] flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity.” Of the 25 most common phthalates, only a few of these dangerous compounds have been regulated out of usage in industrial and household uses, which easily passes into waterways and therefore into our drinking water. But, how toxic are phthalates, really?

Well, according to a large 2014 report published by the US Center for Disease Control Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel (Chap) on Phthalates, they’re pretty dangerous, and everywhere that you can’t even avoid them all. 

According to The Guardian’s article, “Phthalates are everywhere, and the health risks are worrying. How bad are they really?,” it noted that,

…despite the chemical industry’s efforts to soften the commission’s recommendations, public health advocates are largely pleased with the effort, a rarity when it comes to government-penned reports on chemical safety.

It goes on to say, 

In the past few years, researchers have linked phthalates to asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and type II diabetes, low IQ, neurodevelopmental issues, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, altered reproductive development and male fertility issues.

How’s that for scary? But, it doesn’t end there. 

While the Flint water crisis still continues, lead in drinking water is still a major problem across the entire country. Even small amounts of lead consistently exposed to the young children can have debilitating effects on their development and overall health. And, the Washington, D.C. metro area is affected by elevated levels of lead in drinking water.

It’s important to keep a watchful eye on the annual DC Water Report to see what you should be watching out for in the water.

More Phthalates in Home Products | Dangers in the Water

Back to phthalates, because who doesn’t like a scary movie premise come to life! It turns out that the dangers of drinking water are not the only places you need to worry about phthalates. 

As bad luck would have it, you need to be concerned about cooking with contaminated water, bathing with contaminated products containing phthalates, and finding out what has these chemicals is near-impossible. I know Halloween is over, but I need to hand out a few more tricks than treats this week so you know what to be truly afraid of.

First and foremost, cooking with phthalate-contaminated water is quite toxic. It breaks down the bonds of these chemicals faster releasing the toxins embedded in them.

Second, most household goods that you absorb into your skin, such as fragrance-based lotions and similar, body wash, shampoos and conditioners, and detergents of most kinds contain phthalates. 

And, finally, many foods are processed in facilities with plastic pipes and those pipes pass phthalates directly into the packaged foods you buy. 

All told, phthalates are nearly unavoidable. (Sorry, I told you this was going to be bleak!) But, there are things we can do to minimize our exposure to these toxic compounds in our lives for greater health and wellness.

How to Maximize Safe Water Usage in Your Life

Here are four ways to maximize your and your family’s safety: 

  1. Use a carbon-activated water filtration system for water you use for anything you are going to ingest, cooking or otherwise, no matter if you bought it as bottled water or sourced it from tap water. This won’t get rid of everything contaminating your water, but it will do a great job of minimizing compounds.

    If you’d like to really take it to the next level, try out a nano-filtration system. They are expensive, but they will do a deeper clean of any water you pass through their systems.

  2. While it may seem simple, use glass instead of plastic containers. Glassware is durable, reusable and sustainable, and doesn’t leach chemicals into your water, food or household goods.

    Also, if you do use any plastics, pay attention to their recycling codes to stay clear of phthalates (and their cousins, BPA and BPS). Recycling codes 3 and 7 typically contain them. While using plastics with recycling codes 1, 2 or 5 will not usually have them.

  3. Buy organic and phthalate-free products, wherever possible. Again, by supporting processes upstream that don’t include plastics in the first place, it reduces the risks once those products and resources reach you. This doesn’t mitigate all phthalates or lead from your water, but once more it reduces those levels and gives you more control over what goes into your body.

  4. Last but not least, check out organizations like Clean Water Action and other local water quality advocacy organizations. Put pressure on your local government to make water quality a priority, because even though you’re likely not dehydrated, you deserve clean water when you want it.

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Jaws ends with a heroic move by Matt Hooper (played by a then-much-younger Richard Dreyfuss) throwing a pressurized scuba tank into the mouth of the hungry great white shark. Then, with the boat Orca sinking, he shoots the scuba tank, exploding the tank and the monster attacking them in the process. 

Sadly, there’s not such heroic one-shot-saves-all opportunity for eliminating the dangers in the water with which we drink, cook, and bathe. We have to be vigilant with our practices to keep our bodies and our families’ safe.

The Myth of Drinking Eight Glasses of Water Per Day

The Myth of Drinking Eight Glasses of Water Per Day

The year was 1945 and the United States Food and Nutrition Board, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, was a young five years old. And, they wrote a recommendation for the daily intake of 2 liters (roughly 10.5 cups) of water. And, henceforth the myth of drinking eight glasses of water per day was born. At least, as best as we can know.

The missing element about all of this was a misinterpretation of where most of your daily intake of water comes from…food. So, let’s discuss how much water has been recommended for daily intake, why drinking eight glasses of water per day is wrong, how much water is too much, and when you should actually drink water. 

Water Daily Intake Recommendations

Governments are well-established recommendation engines of how much of any substance individuals should ingest. From calcium to vitamin D to sodium and macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) to water, governments give advice on what their scientific research believes is best for its constituents. For example, as of 2011, the same US Food and Nutrition Board (USFNB) recommends a wide variety of daily intake sources to maintain homeostasis (i.e., optimum levels for humans to survive) in their publications. 

From the USFNB, they note that the average adult females should take in about 2.7 liters (about 11 cups), while adult males about 3.7 liters (about 15 cups), per day. 

But, don’t be deceived by the “daily intake” as meaning to drink water. As we’ll see shortly, the myth of drinking eight glasses of water per day runs deep in our culture, and the more you know, the healthier you and your loved ones will be by spreading good information.

The Myth of Drinking Eight Glasses of Water Per Day

So, the USFNB tries to give some good information in the mid-1940’s about daily water intake, but the media bungles the whole story, leaving out the pertinent details of what that really means for everyday Americans.

In research speak, the USFNB notes that, “Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” What that really means is, you get most of your daily water intake from the food you eat, not the water you drink on a daily basis.

As Dr. Aaron E. Carroll notes in his The New York Times article, “No, You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day,”

Water is present in fruits and vegetables. It’s in juice, it’s in beer, it’s even in tea and coffee. Before anyone writes me to tell me that coffee is going to dehydrate you, research shows that’s not true either.

You get the vast amount of your daily water intake from drinking and eating normally without ever having a glass of water. It’s not that drinking water as your beverage of choice is bad; that’s good. But, the notion that you should go out of your way to drink that much water is a completely false narrative.

And, the problem continues because of huge marketing campaigns around drinking lots of water by manufacturers of bottled water (from Coca-Cola (Dasani), PepsiCo (Aquafina), Nestlé, and Poland Springs), as well as commercial water cooler providers, and water bottle makers.

While the myth of drinking eight glasses of water per day is pervasive, there are actually more risks to most Americans today of over-hydration than dehydration.

When Your (Water) Cup Runneth Over

The fanaticism surrounding drinking water as a healthy part of life overshadows the positive aspects of simply drinking enough water to maintain adequate levels in your body. Most notably, the amount we urinate and even life-threatening conditions occur from overconsumption of water. Too much of anything can be a bad thing after all, right?

So, urinating too often is not only a productivity killer (even though commercial entities would try to make you think differently and even cherry-pick data to make it sound like there’s a problem), but it might also show an underlying health condition you should seek help for from a licensed medical professional.

Urinating frequently can be a symptom of simply drinking too much water, but if you are drinking too much water and aren’t noticing your uptick in urination frequency it could be hiding a bigger problem. You can be suffering from a urinary tract infection, overactive bladder, or diabetes, and be very well unaware. 

Further, water intoxication, as it’s called to take in too much daily water, can lead to hyponatremia (low sodium levels in the body). In basic terms, your body flushes out too much sodium (salt) in your bloodstream. This can cause dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, and other symptoms. There are greater risks of overconsumption as well (if you’re worried you are drinking too much water), but I don’t want to dote on extreme cases.

It is important to note that dehydration can lower cognitive performance. But, this is by no means a pervasive risk that we should be concerned about drinking water specifically, if you follow some basic rules of water consumption. 

When You Should Drink More Water

There is a very simple but effective heuristic approach for determining if the water levels in your body are too high or too low. Pay attention to your pee!

If you pay attention to the color of your urine, you should be good to go. Your urine should be a light yellow for healthy adults that aren’t on medications or with special conditions. (If you are in that specific group, ask your medical provider.) If your urine is clear or dark yellow, you’re drinking too much or too little water, respectively. It’s that easy!

If it’s too little water (dark yellow urine), drink a single cup of water. Then, you can check your next trip to the bathroom to see how it looks.

Additionally, if you feel thirsty, have a cup of water. Your body is miraculously capable of triggering a sensation for thirst when it needs more water.

One additional tip: if you are an athlete, work outdoors or indoors in a physical capacity (such as  construction engineer or yoga instructor or restaurant server), or other physically demanding situations (like, going for a hike), carry water with you and drink water as you need it. Your body will lose water faster in those environments. 

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While it may seem like good advice that we should be drinking eight glasses of water per day, it’s more likely that you’re getting plenty of water and simply need to have a healthy nutrition plan.

How much water do you drink per day, and why? Let us know in the comments!

Your Guide to Healthy Cooking Oils: What You Need to Know - Four Directions Wellness

Your Guide to Healthy Cooking Oils: What You Need to Know

We hear a lot about fat in the news. How much fat we should eat? How to shed pounds of fat with the latest “diet”? One of the topics that comes up is, how healthy cooking oils are in our nutrition?

To start, it’s important to understand that there are two types of fat that are often conflated: dietary fat and body fat. Dietary fats are one of the three basic macronutrients that make up our nutritional needs. While body fat is the tissue that lines under our skin and around our organs, storing excess energy and providing insulation. Important to understand, eating dietary fats alone don’t make body fat; it’s a combination of fat types, caloric intake, metabolic energy expenditure, and genes.

But, too much dietary fat, say, in our less-than-healthy cooking oils, can contribute to heart disease, including but not limited to symptoms and conditions such as stroke, heart failure, pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction. Scary stuff! According to the American Heart Association (AHA), cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 840,000 deaths per year in the most recent analysis (2016). AHA estimates that over one million such coronary events in 2019 alone.

To get the healthiest cooking oils for your hearts’ sake, in this article I cover the basics you should know about healthy cooking oils. 

Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Fats in Cooking Oils

In order to understand healthy cooking oils to use, you need to understand the makeup of the fats that are resident within those cooking oils we cook, sauté and bake with every day. These fats include saturated, unsaturated, and trans dietary fats, and cholesterol. Most of the difference between these dietary fats have to do with the hydrogen and carbon bonds of the molecules that chain together to make up these oils, but let’s see if we can’t demystify these dietary fats with less chemistry and more practical advice!

Saturated Fats

Saturated dietary fats are usually present in animal-based products such as dairy, animal meats, palm oil, coconut oil, milk and cream, and cooking margarine. These are dangerous to eat in large amounts since this type of dietary fat increases heart disease risk and cholesterol levels in your blood. These fats are typically solid at room temperature.

These “sat fats” are also in many foods we find packaged on the grocery store shelves, such as baked goods, cakes, crackers, fried foods, and potato chips. Where possible, you should do as much as possible to reduce sat fats in your nutrition lifestyle!

Unsaturated Fats

Next, we have unsaturated fats, which are healthier types of dietary fats and usually liquid at room temperature. While sat fats contribute to clogging up arteries throughout the body, unsaturated fats reduce that risk along with purging the body of excess blood cholesterol. Win, win!

Unsaturated fats come in two main forms: polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. Polyunsaturated fats are contained in Omega-3 (fish) and Omega-6 (soybeans and some nuts (e.g., brazil nuts)) fatty acid-containing foods, while monounsaturated fats are present in avocado, canola oil, olive oil, and some nuts (e.g., almond and cashew nuts).

When in doubt, look to those “good fats” from fish, nuts, seeds and vegetables whenever possible.

Trans Fats

The scariest of all dietary fats are the artificially-produced trans fats (or, trans fatty acids). These are fats that were healthy fats (liquid at room temperature) but bonded with hydrogen to become solid at room temperature, mimicking saturated fats. Their only purpose was to reduce spoilage of fats and have no health benefits.

While they’ve been banned in the United States, beware that imported products may still appear with them, so read your food labels for anything that says “hydrogenated” in the ingredients. Also, “0 trans fat,” by law, can be up to 0.5% trans fat in the ingredients, so read those ingredients and monitor portions based on that.

Cholesterol

Finally, we have our final dietary fat that happens to also be a body fat: cholesterol. It is present in the body to help produce hormones, cell membranes are made out of this stuff, fat-soluble vitamins, and even aid in digestion. Cholesterol that we eat has two main types such as unsaturated fats–HDL and LDL. HDL cholesterol is the healthy kind and you should focus on foods that contain HDL cholesterol, which all happen to be foods that contain good fats.

Now that we have a better understanding of dietary fats, we can look at the various cooking oils and determine which are healthier than others, and which to cook with when.

Healthy Cooking Oils

To understand healthy cooking oils, we need to understand the archetype of unhealthy ones. And, one to focus on is canola oil. Created by Canadian scientists (“Canada” plus “oil” became “Canola”) by crossbreeding several types of oilseed crops, canola oil is a mostly genetically-modified, highly-refined, and lacks nutrient-richness our bodies need. It goes through high heat and chemical bleaching and deodorizing, among the many other processes needed from such a high-demand, high-yield oil crop. And, the final nail in the coffin is that canola oil lacks any unique flavor so it adds little to the complexity of the food you’re making. Overall, canola oil should be avoided.

Here are three healthy cooking oils to tackle your household’s cooking, sautéing, dipping and baking needs: extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, and safflower oil.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (and Olive Oil, Generally)

Popularized by Rachel Ray in her television appearances and show, cookbooks and cooking products, EVOO (or, extra virgin olive oil) is the unrefined (higher oleic acid contents, more antioxidants and greater anti-inflammatories present) style of oil from the olive tree. EVOO is best for dipping and unheated uses of oils (vinaigrettes, unheated sauces, dressings and such), as other oils have higher smoke points. 

Avocado Oil

Newer than other oils in the healthy cooking oils category, avocado oil is packed with monounsaturated fats and a high cooking temperature (375 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit). It’s also less refined than some other cooking oils, and even with a little saturated fat it retains more nutrients and minerals for the truly health-conscious. 

Safflower Oil

Safflower plants are adorned by bright yellow-orange-red pom-poms. They are the source of safflower oil, which happens to have one of the highest smoke points of most cooking oils (510 degrees Fahrenheit). When you need a neutral flavor for cooking, sautéing or baking, safflower oil is ideal for its plentiful levels of unsaturated fats. 

Two notable mentions include peanut and sesame oils for cooking and sautéing jobs, where you don’t mind the nutty and complex flavors (like noodle dishes).

Caveats

Notes on all healthy cooking oils:

  • Any oil that has started to smell bad or rancid is no longer healthy. You should dispose of it immediately, as it is harmful.
  • Smoking or burned oils create dangerous carcinogens that create inflammatory response in the body. Once burned, dump the oil and start over so as not to contaminate your food, and your body.
  • Don’t reuse cooking oil. It seems economical and tempting, but once you’ve cooked (heated) the oil, you should not use that oil again as you’ll create more carcinogens that will then enter the food, and again, your body.

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Healthy cooking oils does require some studying when looking at food labels at the grocery store. But, once you know there are a few oils that you can command the kitchen with, it’s much easier.

What’s your favorite healthy cooking oil, and why? Let me know in the comments!

The Healing Powers of Honey

The Healing Powers of Honey

Every day, millions of people worldwide sweeten their tea, oatmeal and other foods throughout the day with honey. But, what many might not realize are the healing powers of honey.

Honey is the sweet substance produced by bees and related insects extracting the nectar from flowers and other plants, which they store in those waxy-patterned honeycombs. For more than 8,000 years, humans have been foraging for honey, and today we collect honey from wild colonies as well as from domesticated colonies from beekeeping (or, apiculture).

While honey is one of our ancient forms of sustenance, it also has medicinal properties that has been the study of more and more research today. In this week’s article, I’m going to cover the healing properties of honey along with differences between honey types and where you can find honey around Alexandria, Virginia.

Different Honey Types

Honey is graded in terms of constituency, color and processing. To start, honey can be found in golden amber (more expensive) to deep dark brown (less expensive). The color of the honey mostly comes from its constituency, or the source of blossom from which the bees extracted the nectar to produce honey. 

Here in the United States, we get a majority of our honey from mixed-source honey (a/k/a multifloral) and so the constituency is fairly consistently medium darkness and taste from the honey blends. Some of the blossoms frequently used for honeybees are alfalfa, avocado, blueberry, buckwheat, clover, wildflowers, and more. Honeys that are unifloral (which is from just a single source) tend to be pricier.

One of the most sought-after honeys in recent history is manuka honey, which comes from the New Zealand Manuka bush. It’s prized for its medicinal qualities and unique flavor. 

Finally, we distinguish honey based on its processing; whether it’s been sourced “raw” or pasteurized and filtered. Raw honey has not been heated and filtered to deactivate yeast and prevent fermentation. “Regular” or pasteurized honey has gone through this process and filtered for clarity so it looks more uniform when bottled for purchase. Proponents of raw honey state that the healthy enzyme, amylase, is removed when regular honey is filtered, among other beneficial qualities.

No matter what type of regular honey you’re eating, if it’s from a high-quality, reputable producer, you should be able to enjoy it for normal uses. But when we need to consider the healing powers of honey, it may be worth considering raw honey, and even Manuka honey, for the most healthful impact.

Healing Properties and Uses of Honey

Antioxidant-Rich Food to Combat Disease

Free radicals in our body contribute to heart disease, cancer and other maladies throughout our lives. Antioxidants (mostly sourced from plant-based foods) are the superheroes capable of squashing those free radicals in our system before they can do us harm.

Honey is packed with, according to “[a] University of California-Davis study [explained in Natural Awakening’s “Honey Almighty” article] detected higher levels of polyphenolic antioxidants in participants after just one month of honey supplementation. Other studies confirm that honey contains numerous antioxidants. They include chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase and pinocembrin, which all help to prevent and repair cellular damage from disease-causing free radicals.”

So, not only does its low glycemic index help you stay fuller longer for possible weight loss benefits, the antioxidants in honey are doing double and triple duty to fight off free radicals trying to cause disease in your body. From honey on the inside, let’s see what honey can heal on the outside.

Soothe Wounds and Burns

In addition to ample discuss and use of honey as a part of natural cosmetic and beauty products, honey has been studied with regard to burns and other types of wounds. While hospitals likely won’t use honey for severe burns and wounds, as an in-home remedy that’s cost-effective and simply effective, it can do wonders.

According to the review of 26 studies covering 3,000 individuals’ burns and wounds, when honey is applied, “[t]here is high quality evidence that honey heals partial thickness burns around 4 to 5 days more quickly than conventional dressings.” While more research needs to be done to validate the science on this, it’s a very positive step in finding out more healing properties of honey.

Make sure to clean and disinfect wounds and burns, before applying honey. And, if you see it get worse after a few days, it’s best to consult a licensed medical professional.

Honey May Be a Superbug Fighter

Speaking of medical professionals, published in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research 2011 study, “Antimicrobial Activity of Honey with Special Reference to Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Methicillin Sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA),” honey is able to fight off some pretty nasty superbugs. This has been confirmed in multiple other studies outside of human use, and now researchers are looking to further study how it might be applied in real situations. This could decrease mortality rates in hospitals where these superbugs thrive and attack patients in vulnerable health states.

This may be related to why honey has been shown to decrease the duration of diarrhea, and even acid reflux. This can be especially helpful after certain types of surgical procedures.

Clear Fluid Diets After Surgery

After surgery, such as gastrointestinal (GI) surgery, your body needs to recuperate in every possible way, including the food you digest. Frequently, your doctor will give you instructions on what you can eat and sometimes that’s with the nutrition plan of a “clear fluid diet” for a period of time after the surgery.

Honey, it turns out, is one of those chosen options to ease through your body’s system while your body is aided in healing. Honey is not only easy to digest, its aforementioned antioxidant-richness and antibiotic properties, make it a go-to option for post-surgery recovery.

Possible Seasonal Allergy Relief With Local Honey 

If you suffer from seasonal pollen allergies, many people suffer right along with you. And, you might have heard about the folk remedy of eating local honey to be able to build up an immunity, of sorts, to the pollen in the air.

The science is conflicted over this subject and more rigorous studies need to be conducted to really test this hypothesis. Honey, especially processed honey, has filtered out much of the pollen that would remain and possibly contain the benefits of helping you build such an immunity. So, if you are going to test this on yourself, make sure to go for raw honey from a reputable, local honey producer.

Even if it’s benefits are limited for seasonal allergies or placebo effect, local honey is delicious and comes in so many varieties. And two words of warning: for a small population they can have an allergy to honey itself, and never give children under one year of age honey for risk of botulism (which is a type of food poisoning). Other than that, honey’s worth checking out for local varieties!

Where to Buy Quality Honey Near Alexandria, Virginia

As we’ve detailed before, our local Alexandria City farmers markets have honey for sale. So, check out their vendors and schedules to pick up some honey from quality, local farms.

If you’re looking for specialty honey, you can check out this list of local beekeepers in the region, as well as some DC local honey (which is even more rare) if you want to cross the Potomac River.

And, if you’re interested in learning more about apiculture and getting some sweet honey, check out The Bee Store down in Lake Ridge, Virginia (just 30 minutes from Alexandria), and their beekeeping classes.

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Honey has a wide variety of uses both for food and health. The healing powers of honey may be understated, but it doesn’t make it any less worthwhile to stockpile some great honey in your cabinets year-round.

What’s your favorite type of honey? Do you have any family home remedies and uses to share? Let me know in the comments!

Your Guide to Buying Meat: What You Need to Know

Your Guide to Buying Meat: What You Need to Know

In a recent article, Plant-Based Meats: What You Need to Know, I wrote about the differences between the new plant-based meats that have taken to the market with much fanfare. In this week’s edition, I take you through all the different varieties of animal-based meats in the markets around Alexandria, Virginia, and the surrounding areas, as your guide to buying meat.

From grass-fed beef to free-range bison and hormone-free chicken to antibiotic-free, low-fat turkey, there are endless options and complexity to buying animal meats today. To get the best meat for you and your family, let’s tackle the differences, the standards for meat, and where you can find them locally.

Differences Between All the Meats!

Dating back to the earliest humans, animal meat is a source of nutrition; hunting in groups to take down large prey. Then, as early as 10,000 BCE, humans begin to domesticate animals, including poultry, sheep, cattle, pigs, horses and others, for harvesting and to do work.

In general, meat constitutes the fleshy muscle, fat and associated tissue that we eat. When discussing most adult mammal meat, such as cattle, goats, horses, pigs, sheep and others, they are categorized as red meat, while chicken, turkey and other fowl are considered white meat. 

Also, for purposes of this discussion, fish and seafood are types of meat (except by some religious definitions). Meat is a protein source in nutrition science (and by government regulation), and fish and seafood are just that. Technically, amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles all contain edible meat for humans, but I’m only focusing on birds, fish and mammals here.

Regarding most of the meat we eat in the modern world, notwithstanding the Paleo diet popularity, here are the animals and their meat (each linked to their USDA Nutritional Facts database search/listing):

These are not all the meat options in the world, but they are the most common ones that you will see on grocery store shelves and from boutique butchers and markets today. With a knowledge of the types of meat and their nutritional facts, we are armed to find out how they are differently raised and harvested.

Standards in the Meat Industry

There are any number of standards in the meat industry, that can make selecting the right combination of qualities a bit daunting. I want to set the record straight for you so that you can make more informed decisions about the meat you buy and eat, so let’s look at all the buzzwords you see at the market.

Organic Versus Processed Meat

What does it mean when you see that you’re buying organic meat? In our article, Organic Fruits and Vegetables: What You Need to Know, we discussed that,

The important thing that organic foods do is substantially benefit public health by not using irradiation to kill contaminants (which breeds more antibiotic resistant bacteria in the long-term) while using fewer chemical additives and synthetic pesticides. None of this is zero, but organic means hopefully less-detrimental impact on your health over conventional food crops.

Standards aside, organic produce provides the most compelling reason in that organic farms already and continually work to lessen their environmental impact. With worsening climate impacts on the planet, there’s a risk to the entire food production process. By supporting organic produce, it creates an across-the-board improvement to organic food production through market forces.

Swap out foods, food crops and produce for meat and the same mostly applies. Organic meat implies that the animals are raised and harvested without, or with limited, use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones or the use of antibiotics.

While it’s widely marketed as more healthful, organic meat has limited (perhaps a bit more healthy Omega-3 fatty acids) to no added nutritional value that makes up for the higher cost at the grocer. If you want to buy organic meat, the reasons would be for the environmental and social benefits.

On the other hand, processed meats can be equally expensive today. There are many artisanal varieties that can be four, five and nine times the price of conventional and organic meat. Processed meats apply flavoring or preserving methods such as curing, fermenting, salting and smoking to the meat. These processed meats include, generally, bacon, canned meat, corned beef, ham, jerky, meat sauces, packaged “deli” meat, salami and sausages. 

Beware that if you want sliced deli meat and it’s packaged, it’s likely been processed in some way to preserve it. So, get your fresh meats sliced at the deli counter to ensure it is less processed.

Hormone-Free

One area that gets quite a lot of attention on meat packaging is that they are hormone-free. Namely, the hormones estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, that promote growth of the animal while it’s developing. The difference in hormones given from those produced naturally by the animal are small in scale, but used as a marketing slogan by meat manufacturers. If you eat one egg you get just about the same amount of the hormone estrogen…if you ate nearly 170 pounds of hormone-fed beef. As you can see, the difference is widely exaggerated. Plenty of hormone-free meats exist on the shelves of your grocer, if for medical reasons it’s been prescribed by your doctor.

Grass-Fed (Grain-Free)

Mostly for cattle, you may see that your beef is grass-fed (grain-free). This simply means that they were allowed to forage for their own food (grass), instead of being fed a consistent store of grains. There are some studies that show, similar to organic meat, that there is a slightly elevated level of Omega-3 fatty acids in grass-fed beef, and that grain-fed beef has more total fat content. Some foodies say grass-fed beef is tastier than grain-fed. The downside is similar to all of these standards; you’re going to pay more at the market for them.

Free Range, and Eating Wild

When you hear about free range, it’s usually in the context of poultry, and more specifically, chicken. In the United States, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines “free range” as the poultry having had “access to the outside.” That doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence among environmental and animal activists about how much time poultry get a chance to see nature. So, don’t buy too much into the hype of free range.

Additionally, there is an interesting movement around eating wild. That is, eating animal meats that are raised outside of factory farms in the case of cattle, bison, sheep, poultry, and even fish. This helps to support more local farms and buying more locally, which has a positive environmental impact. That’s worth checking out!

You will see “Wild Caught” on the packaging or signage for fish, such as salmon, indicating that they are not from a fish farm. (Think of a fish farm as a giant aquarium where fish are raised in captivity until harvested for sale.)

For added fun, you can find more wild meat in game meats, such as wild poultry, venison, bison, wild rabbit and more. There’s no standard there, except that you can’t buy these in the grocery store because it’s prohibited. For the meat you can buy at the store, let’s see where you can find quality meat in and around Alexandria, Virginia.

Where to Buy Quality Meat Around Alexandria, Virginia

Grocers

If you’re looking for a quick shopping experience there is plenty of meat at your local major grocers, including Giant Food, Harris Teeter, Wegmans, Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s. We are blessed with an abundance of options right in the city.

Butchers

For the hometown champion, look no further than Let’s Meat on the Avenue! They’re your neighborhood butcher shop with all the perks, including a list of where they source all of their meat right on the home page of their website. They have weekly sausages (see the list on their website) and you can call them during business hours to see what’s in stock or to make special orders.

Fresh Fish

Fish is a bit more difficult to get fresh in the Alexandria city limits, but there are a few options. For starters, check out the Del Ray Farmers Market and Old Town Farmers Market, among the other farmers markets. You can find select vendors selling fresh fish there.

If you want a better selection, venture into the District’s Southwest Waterfront to Captain White’s Seafood City, where you can buy fresh and cooked seafood.

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What’s your favorite meat? Where do you buy meat in and around Alexandria, Virginia and the Washington, DC, area? Let me know in the comments!

The Healing Powers of Salt

The Healing Powers of Salt

On nearly every dining table in the western world, there are two condiments—salt and pepper. Not paprika. Not cumin. Not cinnamon. Salt and pepper. Why is that? I would love to say that it had an over-sized impact on humanity because of the healing powers of salt (which are rarely mentioned). But, it’s more complex than that.

Salt has a storied history, starting back from the dawn of human civilizations. Salt is a general chemical term that represents the ionic compounds formed when an acid and a base react. Most of us know salt as sodium chloride (NaCl), the chemical compound used for preserving food and as a flavoring.

Louis XIV demanded that his food only be flavored with salt and pepper. And, it’s opined that that monarch’s culinary seasoning choices in the eighteen century, which influenced French cuisine and ultimately influenced all of modern Western cuisine thereafter, are why we use salt and pepper today as our primary two condiments at meals.

But, salt. That marvelous, miracle compound has a much richer history, many varieties and further, healing properties I think will make the next few minutes worth the read. Let’s see if it’s worth its weight in salt.

History of Salt

Fun fact: salt is the only rock humans eat.

In Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky details the “substance so valuable it served as currency, …influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.” Yes, salt is that powerful.

Salt is an essential nutrient (that is, our body doesn’t make it). The human body needs about six grams of salt consumed per day in order to maintain homeostasis. Consumed since the dawn of mankind, early humans have their salt needs met from eating animal meat. It was likely during the transition from hunter-gatherers to agricultural settlements, that people discovered that salt had preservative properties. That is, meat can be cured with salt and therefore last long periods without spoiling. It’s perhaps because of salt that agricultural settlements could be established at all.

Salt begins to be harvested in earnest by the Chinese around 6,000 BCE. By this time, there are over 40 different types of salt that the Chinese were cultivating from different salt production methods. Two of their primary methods are still in use today.

As an aside, while many identify soy sauce with Japanese cuisine (as a condiment for sushi and sashimi) the Chinese and salt are to thank. Back in ancient dynasties, the Chinese culinary experts, likely for the emperor(s), discover soy sauce as a byproduct of trying to stretch the expensive luxury (salt) with fermented fish, and swapping it out with soy beans. The resulting soybean paste is diluted and through further culinary testing, adding edible molds, soy sauce is born.

From salt cultivation in Antiquity, several wars happen. While I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details, of note is that impact of salt in America’s Revolutionary War. The British Empire, in a tactic to inhibit Patriots’ ability to preserve their food, enlist Loyalists to interfere in the shipments of salt to the colonies.

Salt shapes where cities were established throughout history, near sources of salt and persuades the establishment of trade routes between those who are producing and needing salt throughout different kingdom. Historians may call it the Silk Route (or Silk Road), but one of the main items that traversed that trade route was, you guessed it, salt.

Today, some salt mines are used as storage facilities deep underground because of their low-moisture controlling environment and the space available from the extraction. Salt continues a never-ending impact on humanity, most importantly on our health.

The Healing Properties of Salt

Salt over the centuries has gone from popular, luxury product to an everyday dining table commodity and harped about how it’s bad for your health. But, as many ancient healing practices and modern doctors attest to, salt isn’t bad for you if you use it in the right ways and amounts. Here are a few ways the healing properties of salt can work for your health and well-being.

You can use salt water rinses to naturally remedy a host of oral conditions, including gingivitis (the most common form of gum disease), many types of infections, sores and wounds. Salt water promotes natural healing and reduces inflammation in the mouth. Simply take some salt (about half a teaspoon) and stir it into warm water. Swish around the affect area of your mouth for about 10 seconds and repeat this procedure a few times per day until the condition abates, or as daily oral care. Even Colgate promotes the power of a salt water rinse for oral care, even when they’d rather you buy their products.

Another important, protective benefit of salt comes in the form of sea salt; Celtic Sea Salt has naturally embedded potassium and iodine. According to research published in the Food & Nutrition Research journal, “Natural sea salt consumption confers protection against hypertension and kidney damage in Dahl salt-sensitive rats,” humans may benefit (i.e., get protection against heart disease) from sea salt.

When you drink a Gatorade or similar nutrition drinks, you’re drinking a specific mixture of salt and other minerals (with copious doses of sugar, for better or worse) that forms electrolytes. Think of electrolytes as nature’s way of conducting electrical charge for the proper functioning of your cells. You can skip the processed drinks and simply stir in a half-teaspoon of sea salt to recharge your cells after a fitness session at the gym, or a bike ride or run around the park.

Skin conditions, similar to oral conditions, can be remedied with the healing properties of salt. According to Our Everyday Life,

The trace minerals in sea salt help to soothe and heal skin that is inflamed, broken out in a rash, itching or even oozing, according to herbalist and nutritionist Stephanie Tourles. Add sea salt to bathwater to reduce discomfort and speed the healing of skin lesions caused by acne, eczema, poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac and psoriasis.

It’s important to limit your salt baths so as not to dry out your skin, but your skin will thank you if you’re suffering from any number of skin problems. And, you don’t need body-damaging medications to treat and manage them. 

Buying and Using Salt at Home

Of course, you can spend a lot or a little on salt at the grocery store. But, buying salt doesn’t need to empty your bank account to fill your home with healthy, healing salts.

You have salts for cooking and external uses on the body. So, become familiar with edible salts that you use for cooking around the kitchen. The healthiest as noted above are sea salts that are iodized and contain potassium. No matter what sea salts you use (typically over using table salt) for cooking, remember that metal pans typically de-iodize salt so it’s best to use the salt after the food has touched metal (including metal spoons!). This will help to keep the iodization intact before it gets into your body. This is not always possible when cooking, but it’s worth being aware.

Take note of your use of Himalayan Sea Salt. It’s popular but is a mined salt from a limited Earth resource. It will be mined to extinction in the coming years, so be mindful of what types of sea salt you’re purchasing and its impact on our natural resources.

Many salts are also added with herbs and other minerals to create complexity of flavors in food. For external salt use, they can be mixed with other minerals, essential oils, and flower blossoms for scent and added healing properties. Quality and research are key in buying and using salt at home, and the time investment can reap great benefits for your health and well-being.

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“Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history,” says Mark Kurlansky in Salt: A World History.

From mined or harvested salts such as sea salt, Kosher salt, fleur de sel and many other salt varieties, it endures as not only a powerful flavoring but also because of the healing powers of salt.

So the next time you’re sitting down to a meal, take a moment to consider the impact that little container of salt sitting on the table has had on your existence.

Organic Fruits and Vegetables: What You Need to Know

Organic Fruits and Vegetables: What You Need to Know

Almost every healthy food article I read talks about the importance of getting more fruits and vegetables into your daily nutrition lifestyle. And, the idea of eating organic fruits and vegetables is a frequent recommendation.

But, what does “organic” mean in the context of fruits and vegetables? And, does that mean the fruits and vegetables are better or safer?

To get the best fruits and vegetables for you and your family, in this article I cover the basics you should know about buying organic fruits and vegetables. 

Differences Between GMO, Conventional and Organic Food Products

While there has been much bandied about in the media about the latest flavor of Coca-Cola or sugar-laden cereal for kids, the differences between GMO, conventional and organic food products are far more important than all those advertisements.

To start, genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are, in the context of food, crops that have had genetic engineering used on them to alter the fundamental structure of the plant to gain an advantage. Many GMOs are modified to be insect-resistant, heartier against disease, and larger than their original hybrid or heirloom varieties.

Conventional crops use all the standard processes in a modern, industrial farm. They use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, along with manures. And, they have practices that lead to water overuse, contaminants to the surrounding region, establish monocultures, and destroy forests and native vegetation. The conventional fruits and vegetables you’re eating get the benefits of mass production but also the negative side effects of possible pollutants from these practices, plus the impact on global climate change.

Switching over to organic fruits and vegetables, to certify a fruit or vegetable as “organic” here in the United States (which I’ll get to below), understand that the food is made using sustainable practices and is required to be GMO-free to be “certified organic.” So, don’t buy GMO-free alone because the benefits are built into organic foods.

Let’s look at the standards of organic farming and certified organic fruits and vegetables to further understand what makes them special in contrast to GMO and conventional crops.

Standards for Organic Fruits and Vegetables

The National Organic Program by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides the regulations and requirements for labeling products as organic.

But, “organic” doesn’t mean no pesticides or fertilizers were used. Similarly named but unique, the National Organics Program headed by the Environmental Protection Agency has guidelines for the standards for which pesticides or fertilizers can be used in organic foods.

From a nutritional value perspective, organic foods don’t provide any substantively different micronutrient advantages. The important things that organic foods do is substantially benefit public health by not using irradiation to kill contaminants (which breeds more antibiotic resistant bacteria in the long-term) while using fewer chemical additives and synthetic pesticides. None of this is zero, but organic means hopefully less-detrimental impact on your health over conventional food crops.

Standards aside, organic produce provides the most compelling reason in that organic farms already and continually work to lessen their environmental impact. With worsening climate impacts on the planet, there’s a risk to the entire food production process. By supporting organic produce, it creates an across-the-board improvement to organic food production through market forces.

How to Bring More Organic Fruits and Vegetables Into Your Life

If you are concerned about you and your family’s health, and the planet, and want to bring more organic fruits and vegetables into your life, there are four easy ways to do so.

Check the Organic Produce section of your local grocer. You can find an organic fruits and vegetables section in almost every major grocery store today. If you shop at a small grocer make sure to check their organics labels to make sure they are authentic; you can compare them against the actual labels here. Misuse of the seal on foods and other products, including alcohol, honey, pet foods, aquaculture, mushrooms, textiles and cosmetics, comes with a hefty nearly $18,000 fine per violation. So, it’s unlikely, but major grocery store chains get more scrutiny than smaller ones.

Subscribe to a local CSA. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs abound in the Alexandria and Metropolitan DC area. Many of these CSA’s are produced on locally-grown, organic farms, so you get to support your local farm economies, your health, and the environment!

Shop at farmers markets in the area. Similar to the above, if a CSA is not quite your cup of tea, you can find local farmers markets happening weekly in the DC area. The same farmers who have CSAs also sell at the farmers markets and frequently carry ample organic fruits and vegetables.

Processed food products using organic ingredients. While we all wish to eat more whole foods in our ideal nutritional lifestyles, processed foods still make up a good majority of our food intake. So, check the labels of processed foods you’re buying and make sure they too carry a USDA certified organic food label. Every little bit counts! 

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What are you favorite organic fruits or vegetables at home? Why do you buy organic produce? Let me know in the comments!

Plant-Based Meats: What You Need to Know

Plant-Based Meats: What You Need to Know

The future of meat may be plant-based. That might sound like an oxymoron, but plant-based meats are a thing. And, they’re becoming ever more popular in grocery stores and restaurants.

It’s such a threat to animal-based meat, that Mississippi recently enacted a law that makes it a jail-able offense to call these plant-based meats “burgers!” Who could have predicted that just a few years ago?

With plant-based meats being so new, I thought it would be fun to research and tell you all you need to know about the basics of these new meat products.

What’s the Purpose of Plant-Based Meat?

Plant-based meats can be beneficial for three primary reasons: the planet, your health, and reducing animal cruelty (not simply harvesting animals). Let’s take each of these in turn.

A recent study, entitled “Greenhouse gas emissions and energy use associated with production of individual self-selected US diets,” by engineer Martin Heller and his team at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems, published in the journal, Environmental Research Letters, concluded that one-fifth of Americans contributed 46% of US food-based emissions. Put simply, 20% of us are doing 50% of the damage to the planet just by our eating choices daily! Much of the contributions stem from mass-produced animal meat.

As well, the impact of animal proteins on your body can be detrimental. In Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, T. Colin Campbell, PhD (who’s most well-known for his book, The China Study), explains in exquisite detail the impact of eating animal-based meats on the human body over time. In essence, based on his research as the study director of one of the largest, most comprehensive studies of nutrition, there is a link between the eating of animal-based foods and chronic illness (which can include bowel cancer, breast cancer, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and prostate cancer). The remedy, according to Dr. Campbell and his colleagues, is a whole-food, plant-based diet.

Of course, extremes are not easy. And, going vegetarian or vegan is not possible for most people. But, even reducing the amount of meat and other animal products in your diet can have significant, positive impacts on mortality according to the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, as well as weight loss, diabetes prevention and blood pressure benefits.

And, finally, reducing or removing animal meat in favor of plant-based meats has the benefit of reducing animal cruelty around the world. Not all animal harvesting is cruel. But, there are plenty of examples of where factory farming and other types of animal meat production fall short of humane treatment.

The next stop on our journey of understanding plant-based meats is to understand the types and standards in this fast-developing industry.

Types and Standards in Plant-Based Meats

For many years, food companies have innovated alternative options for non-meating eating individuals. Once a fringe, now more and more Americans who identify as some flavor of vegetarian, or as a vegan, don’t feel awkward at a dinner party or company picnic. While the number of vegetarians and vegans have stayed roughly the same percentage of the population over the past 20 years, the number of plant-based meals being eaten by omnivores has risen dramatically.

More than 90% of plant-based meals last year were eaten by non-vegans, according to a UK study. This gives credence to the flexitarianism trend over the past several years. Flexitarians are people who are still eating animal-based meat, but are opting for eating more plant-based meals over meat at most meals.

The next natural question is: are plant-based meats healthier than other meats? This is an easy question with a complex answer. There are many types of plant-based meats on the market, and I’m leaving out meat alternatives here (such as jack-fruit, textured vegetarian protein (TVP), seitan, tempeh, and shiitake/portobello mushrooms). The major brands in this market are Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.

Impossible Foods’s Impossible Burger is primarily made of soy, oils (coconut and sunflower) and additives. While their burger provides fiber, something a normal beef burger won’t provide, a four-ounce patty will provide about 30-40% of your daily fat intake (compared to approximately 25% for that same beef protein). So, marginally better than beef. Over in the Beyond Meat burger, it contains mostly pea protein isolate as its main ingredient; there is hardly a “vegetable” left in this “veggie” burger. As well, it contains more fat (with 23g per 4oz patty), so it’s right up there with a beef burger when it comes to total fat. On the upside, an Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat burgers contain slightly less saturated fat and no cholesterol.  

While there are differing opinions on the healthiness of these plant-based meats, it seems as though most dietitians agree that their choice for you would be whole-food plant meal first then plant-based burger then animal-based burger. So, it can be considered an intermediary option on the way to more healthy options in your diet.

Remarkably, major fast food brands are adopting these plant-based burgers. Burger King and White Castle have both announced or started serving Impossible or Beyond Meat burgers in their restaurants in select locations. They are having stellar success, and this has made some reports claim that plant-based meats will soon be cheaper than animal-based meats.

How to Bring More Plant-Based Meats Into Your Life

If you’re currently eating a lot of red meat at home, at work or on the road, these types of plant-based meats will provide the greatest opportunity for you. In order to take best advantage, it’s about knowing where to get them, how much to include them in your diet, and finding recipes that are nutritious.

Where to Buy

Thankfully, these companies are aware that it’s tough to find out where to find these new meats. So, they’ve created handy locator tools on their websites. You can find them via the Impossible Foods Locator and Beyond Meat Where to Find tools for grocers and restaurants that carry them.

Portions

From reading the current sentiments of many dietitians, it seems like keeping your consumption to less than three of these plant-based meat servings per week is a good idea. This is because of the saturated fats mostly. And, combine your burger with a whole wheat or whole grain bun and lots of colorful vegetables along with your meal.

Recipes

There are actually very few recipes out there that are taking advantage of explicitly the meatless meats we’ve been discussing here. On Impossible Foods’s “Food” section of their website, they present some ideas, and Beyond Meat does give a few recipes beyond just burgers. I recommend looking at any recipes where you would normally use ground beef and simply cook up your preferred choice of “meat” and use that instead. See if you can trick your family into believing it’s real (animal-based) meat!

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The future of meat is varied and more plant than animal. And, as it relates to plant-based meats, there will be more to come. (Brace yourself, as fishless fish is now a thing!) Will you be able to taste the difference? Maybe not. But, your body and the planet will feel it.

What are your experiences with plant-based meats like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat burger? Have you tried them at a restaurant, or made them at home from the grocery store? Let us know in the comments!